This is actually a much weaker Hall of Fame ballot than we have come to expect. Well, unless you count Tiffeny and Briana, who should have been in years ago. Usually there is at least one new potential inductee whose credentials stand out so much that voting is a formality – but we don’t have anyone like that this year. Just a bunch of people with okay to strong, but not overwhelming, candidacies.
One assumes if you care enough about this subject to read my opinion on it, you have already perused the nominees and their biographies.
Here’s who I voted for last year, apart from Brandi Chastain, who is now above such petty concerns:
Chris Armas
Frankie Hejduk
Jason Kreis
Kate Markgraf
Tiffeny Milbrett
Jaime Moreno
Pat Onstad
Steve Ralston
Briana Scurry
So I have one space free. If I want to add anyone else, I’d have to knock someone else off. Let’s see if that’s something I want to do.
For the women, at least, it’s pretty easy. Leslie Osborne and Tina Frimpong Ellertson were good players. But they don’t measure up to Heather Mitts and Aly Wagner – let alone Markgraf, Milbrett and Scurry. Just because a player is eligible, that doesn’t make them a Hall of Famer.
Or, to be less cruel – I think there are players currently on the ballot that are more deserving than Osborne and Ellertson, as well as Mitts and Wagner. You can’t induct a player just because they meet the bare minimum of eligibility. They’re not building the Burj Khalifa in Frisco, you know.
The ballot now includes two of the best outside backs in the history of the US men’s national team – keeping in mind that historically speaking, outside backs are relatively new and relatively ignored. I can’t think of another reason why Frankie Hejduk didn’t make it in last year. Hejduk was the starting outside back (on both sides) in two World Cups, and one of the vanishingly small number of Americans who did not embarrass themselves in the 1998 World Cup. I don’t know what more you’re looking for in a Hall of Famer. Maybe people hold his St. Gallen stint very personally.
Then there’s Steve Cherundolo. If you take his presence on the USMNT Centennial team to heart, then he should be a lock. But he was never what you would call a major star for the national team, and his 2006 World Cup (like most of the rest of the team) was pretty iffy. To me, his major accomplishment is his fifteen seasons in Germany, twelve of them in the Bundesliga, all with the same team. That would be a proud accomplishment for a German, let alone an American. The future may bring us an American who becomes a truly major star in Europe, but Cherundolo has set the standard.
Cherundolo played an unglamorous position an unglamorous way for an unglamorous club. But it’s not the Hall of Glamor. And while it is the Hall of Fame, the purpose of the Hall is to confer fame onto deserving players who would otherwise go unrecognized. I’m not going to overlook him – spoiler, he’s getting the one free spot I have available – but I’m worried others might.
So what do we do about all these MLS stars on the ballot? What can we do about them?
The MLS Extra Time podcast this week echoed an unfortunately common idea – that Major League Soccer needs its own Hall of Fame. I disagree. The Hall covers first division soccer in America. It’s the de facto NASL Hall of Fame, and a growing original ASL Hall of Fame. It was not, and was never supposed to be, only for American national team players.
I give you Bob Lenarduzzi, who didn’t play for the USMNT or a club based in the United States. His NASL career, with justice, earned his spot in the US Soccer Hall of Fame.
Or take the example of Pele. In meaningful games, the legendary player at the end of a legendary career managed to score 36 goals in three seasons. Per Wikipedia, the Santos site (towards the bottom) gives Pele credit for 65 goals in 111 games. One assumes that around half of those games were friendlies, of course. But it speaks volumes for Pele’s dedication to the Cosmos, and to American soccer, that in three short seasons he would play over thirty games a year, scoring in every other outing. The Cosmos traveled the world during that time, and Pele was its key figure. It was a standard of American soccer ambassadorship that has yet to be approached by any other international player.
If the NASL can be appreciated by Hall voters, so can MLS. The US national team was not quite what it is today, though. The voters over the past decade or so have focused on US national team achievements seemingly to the exclusion of all others.
I make the negative argument that Preki and Jeff Agoos were recognized for their MLS achievements, because who on Earth would have voted in Jeff Agoos for his national team accomplishments? Most own goals in the World Cup? Most uniforms burnt?
But for some reason, most voters can’t or won’t induct MLS players who were either substandard or ineligible for the US national team. Marco Etcheverry, Mauricio Cienfuegos and Carlos Valderrama have already been ignored by voters. Barring enlightenment in this year’s electorate, Chris Armas and Jason Kreis will fall under the Veterans’ purview next year.
I myself have a personal system for rating MLS players who lack USMNT credentials. Would you like to hear about it? Thank you.
Foreign players in MLS, as we have seen, have been ridiculously overlooked. If their accomplishments warrant, then I tend to give those players priority. Three of those players on the ballot this year are Pat Onstad and Jaime Moreno. Pat Onstad was, depending on the year, a key reason or the key reason his teams won. Where you want to put him among the top three keepers in MLS history is a matter for debate, but his league accomplishments are undeniable. Keeping Onstad out because he played against, rather than for, the USMNT is ridiculous to me.
And Onstad’s case isn’t even as good as that for Jaime Moreno. A five time MLS Best XI player with more hardware than Home Depot – if Moreno doesn’t fit your conception of a member of the US National Soccer Hall of Fame, I’m baffled at who would.
Now…not every foreign MLS player of note deserves induction, in my opinion. Let’s take, for example, a newcomer on the ballot – Amado Guevara. He was very, very, very good indeed – easily one of the best in the league. For one season. But the rest of his career simply wasn’t up to the standard of a Hall of Fame player. You can’t induct players, in any sport, on the strength of one great season. Guevara didn’t have the numbers, he didn’t have the longevity, he didn’t have the consistency, and for most of his MLS career he did not have the impact you would expect from a Hall of Fame player. He qualifies for the ballot, but that doesn’t mean he deserves a vote over anyone else who also qualified – especially players who accomplished much more.
For Americans who starred in MLS but failed to make a mark for the US national team…frankly, that’s a tougher position. There’s a reasonable assumption that an American Hall of Fame player should have been one of the best American players. So what to do with Onstad’s contemporaries, Kevin Hartman and Joe Cannon? (And, down the road, Nick Rimando?) Their MLS achievements were, and remain, hugely impressive. But they didn’t go to Europe, and they failed to unseat Friedel, Keller or Howard.
Or field players like Jeff Cunningham, Chris Armas, Jason Kreis, Taylor Twellman, Ante Razov, Danny Califf, Ben Olsen, Pablo Mastroeni and Steve Ralston? You would think players who put themselves in the MLS record book deserve lasting recognition, but if you do think that, you can also join me in thinking why other people apparently don’t think like us.
There is now enough of a pileup that choosing who to include and who to leave off is, as the saying goes, angels dancing with pinheads. Why is Josh Wolff a better choice than Brian Ching, while both are inferior to Steve Ralston (if that happens to be your opinion)?
Well, I asked my old pal Alexander the Great how you cut through problems like this. He asked me how annoying it is that, especially in mainstream American sports Halls of Fame, deserving players are “made to wait.”
I really want to vote for Kevin Hartman. He played in 465 games, for Pete’s sake. He was the first keeper to win more than one MLS Cup. (And the first keeper to lose more than one MLS Cup.) Nick Rimando has eclipsed most of his records, but most of Steve Ralston’s records were broken too, and I’m still voting for him. To me, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to try to tell the story of MLS, and American soccer, while leaving him off.
But Armas and Kreis are in their last year of eligibility, while Hartman is new to the ballot. I’m pretty sure I’ll have other chances to vote for Kevin Hartman. I won’t have another chance to vote for Armas or Kreis. What if mine was the one vote that kept either of them out of the Hall? Because I liked Hartman more? I couldn’t live with myself.
….I could also hold back Cherundolo to make room for Hartman (or, conceivably, Ante Razov, who has only this year and next before being thrown on the mercy of the Veterans), but now we’re dangerously close to not voting for someone because “they’re a Hall of Famer, but not a first ballot Hall of Famer.” I haven’t heard a soccer Hall voter trot that one out, and I hope I never will.